Storm

STORM

When the firestorm had passed, I signaled to Jonny on my left, silently asked for covering fire. He nodded, and smoothly slid three more chambers into his flechette cannon. Staatentek MX 3. Military issue, not police. The bleeding wound in his arm did not seem to hamper him at all. Our third team member was lying behind me, with multiple wounds in her upper body. She would be fine, but was out of this round for sure. The freelancing shits that were firing at us had some impressive armament, as the flamethrower we had just experienced attested to.

Let's just go through the introductions here. I'm Justenn Smith - yes, I am aware of the strange second name, but I didn't get to pick it - Captain in the Imperial Police on Rythellan, the planet-city. This city was crime ridden, at least in the poorer buildings, and Imperial procedure was to at least make some attempt to remind our peace loving citizens that there was still somebody in control. That was why my team was here, down at level fifty-odd-fucking something, chasing some friendly gentleman that had decided they wanted to share in the riches of the higher levels.

We are lucky, in a way. They knew these parts better than we did, but they were slowed down by the size and weight of their guns. At the moment, we were in a warehouse, of sorts. For some reason the criminal mind, the lower quality one at least, felt at home in these types of surroundings. Old crates littered the dust-covered floor, and there were several hypodermics lying around, mixed with your standard human rubbish. The only light had come from some sort of flickering square in the roof, which had been shot out. Now the small fire between our two groups cast orange shadows everywhere. Oh yes, and the occasional blast from the flamethrower lit up the area a treat.

Lovely.

So here we were, pinned down by enemy fire in an essentially hostile area. I had called for backup, but this far down it would be slow in coming. Dene, behind me, was already down, and Jonny was wounded. As far as I knew there was only one exit out of here, and we were camped next to it, on the left. The thieves were deeper onto the warehouse, and tracking the last round of exchanges put them some thirty metres in front of us, slightly to the left again. A small fire was burning merrily in the nomansland between us, the top of my personal crate had melted, and the wall behind me would never be the same again. Unless you went for the cratered and scarred look.

Jonny slowly eased his head past his crate, and then dropped immediately. The fireball was slow in coming this time, so we had plenty of time to really get down on the floor. The dumbass shits were apparently to stupid to realize that the flamethrower, while impressive, was not really that effective. Even so, I saw no way out of this, unless-

Jonny was ahead of me, and his hand suddenly contained a small black wedge. This was standard IP issue, unlike some of the other toys in our possession. I dropped over Dene's upper body as he threw the shock grenade to the right, high overhead. She was in no position to protect herself. I hoped that my armour would protect me.

The idiots on the other side actually fired at the grenade, as it rose upwards. Which meant that they could see the rather pretty sight of a shock grenade exploding. From video footage I knew that the grenade produced a perfect sphere, bluish in colour, traveling outwards at roughly the speed of sound.